Life Is Too Short
September 19, 1999
Dear Friends:
On Friday night, I attended my first high school football game in close to twenty years. The smell of the freshly mown grass, the sounds of the crowd and the marching band brought back a flood of memories. It seemed like only yesterday that I was putting on the pads and running around under the lights.
It wasn’t only yesterday though and twenty years can bring a lot of changes. For me, twenty years is a college education, a wife, two kids, two jobs, thirty pounds, a head full of hair and a mortgage ago.
Isn’t it funny that the older you get the more people die young. I remember when I was a youngster, people would talk about someone fifty years old dying and comment about how sad it was that they died so young. I thought to myself how crazy that was to say they died young. They were FIFTY, for crying out loud! They had lived a long, long life. Now, of course, fifty sounds awfully young.
Now this week’s thought is really not about football nor the aging process, but the shortness of this life. It goes by so fast. There is a song that has a line in it that I will never forget. The song says “the lines of life are never long when seen from end to end.” It couldn’t be more true.
One day you are twenty, full of strength and vitality, and the next you are getting mail from AARP.
The Bible tells us that “the length of our days is seventy years– or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.” (Ps. 90:10 NIV) Well, at 36 years old, I can tell you already that 70 or 80 years isn’t enough time. It is not even close to enough time. Woody Allen once said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve immortality through not dying!” Although he probably had no idea of the truth that he spoke, he hit the nail on the head.
The life we live now is “but trouble and sorrow.” The years “quickly pass.” The hope we have is the resurrection from the dead or even better yet, to be alive when the Lord Jesus returns to the earth. The hope we have it to live forever in the Kingdom of God on earth.
The Apostle John wrote that “the world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” (1 John 2:17 – NIV) What a wonderful hope! What incredible encouragement! Life is too short, but it doesn’t have to be.
We despise the ravages of the aging process. We grieve over the loss of our beloved brethren when they go to sleep in Christ. We rue the day when our time will come when we too will sleep awaiting the resurrection from the dead. Yet, we know that for those who love Christ, it is not an end, but a beginning. It is the step we must take prior to the resurrection, judgment, and, by the grace and mercy of God, life without end.
Have a great week!
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